Five for Friday... Snow for Days

It doesn't feel like it, but 

Which also means I'm linking up with Kacey from Doodle Bugs Teaching for

I say it doesn't feel like Friday for good reason.  Winter storm 2.0 rolled into our region Wednesday afternoon, and we haven't had school since.  We knew it was coming...  The forecasts all said it would be here by midday Wednesday, and they were right!  

This was the view from my front porch when coming home from school on Wednesday.  It snowed.  And snowed.  And snowed.  You can't really tell, but when I took this picture, there were flakes as big as your head coming down.  Not really that big, but REALLY big!

We dismissed at 1:00 on Wednesday afternoon, so at least we got a day in (Praise Jesus), but I've really missed my kiddos this week!  We had lots of fun planned for Read Across America Week, and we got quite a bit of it in!

Monday was a VERY exciting day in our classroom!  If you follow education news, you probably know that the State of Indiana has had some turmoil between the State Superintendent of Public Instruction and the Governor.  All politics aside, we were PUMPED that the State Superintendent visited our school on Monday!  It was an absolute honor to host her in our classroom with the other K-1 classrooms.  She read The Cat in the Hat to our classes.  I can't imagine a better way to kick off Read Across America Week!

Aside from our exciting guest reader, we did lots of other fun stuff to celebrate one of the most beloved authors of children's literature.

We made these super cute Cat in the Hat fruit kabobs on Monday.  The kids LOVED them, and they were healthy, too!  We used a toothpick to hold it all together, a grape for the cat's face, and then made an AB pattern using bananas and strawberries.

Monday was also Dress Like Your Favorite Seuss Character Day.  In all honesty, I wanted to be Cindy Lou Who, but I didn't want to have Who hair when Mrs. Ritz visited our school!  I am Sam was a better choice for good hair. :)  With me in this picture are two of my teaching besties, Liz from Mrs. Wimp's Firsties and Lindsey from Miss Law's Kinders.

On Tuesday, we kept the celebration going with Green Eggs and Ham day!  I spent the kids' last recess frantically frying up 2 dozen eggs, then we had a wonderful guest reader read the story while I plated and served it.  Then, we graphed what the kids thought of the green eggs and ham.  Surprisingly, the overwhelming majority LOVED them!  

Thanks to the sweet guest reader momma who took this picture of me teaching.  She's our in-house photographer for events! :)

Wednesday was One Fish, Two Fish  day, and the snow tried to mess it up (we knew at 7 that we were having an early dismissal), but HA to Mother Nature... You can't hold us down!  

Since our principal was scheduled to be our guest reader for that day, we had to rearrange some things since he was occupied with making sure everyone had a way home that afternoon.  Thank goodness for technology, because YouTube has a great video of authors reading One Fish, Two Fish!  And yes, that is Kevin O'Leary from Shark Tank!  

After we read the book, we graphed our colorful Goldfish crackers and did some simple addition with them, packed it up, and went home.

You may be wondering how I plan all of these special events in our classroom.  For this special week, I used the site Sign Up Genius to organize everything.  I got the idea when one of my sweet friends had a baby, and rather than try to organize meals the old fashioned way, her friends used this site to sign up to bring them food.  Immediately, I wanted to try this in my classroom!  

I created the lists of things we needed, shared the link with my classroom parents, and voila!  I had everything I needed for Dr. Seuss Week!  The site will also send reminders to those who sign up.  I loved using it!

I'm in the middle of planning ahead, and I wanted to share my latest creation with you!

It's not quite finished yet, but I hope to have it up by the end of the weekend!  When I do finally get it posted, it will be on sale for the first 24 hours!  Make sure to follow my TPT store to see when it gets posted!

It was a busy week, to say the least, so when I finally got to rest my feet on Monday (I made the mistake of wearing heels...LOL), I saw this on my chair.  Reason #2034 why I love teaching kindergarten!  There are days where we are physically, mentally, and emotionally drained (first week of school, anyone???), but there is no other grade I would rather teach.